Federations in the 21st century will be as much about meaning as money, as concerned with results as much as with resources, and be held to higher standards of both efficiency and effectiveness similar to what they have imposed on their beneficiary agencies.

[The following piece is an abridged version of an article I wrote nearly ten years ago for the Journal of Jewish Communal Service.  At the time, I was Vice President of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

Amid the current rancorous conversation about federations, I recalled this article.  I submit it here to eJP in an effort to advance conversation about substantive matters of organizational performance.  My interest is to offer actionable items intended to assist federations (and foundations) to improve their philanthropic effectiveness.

This article obviously does not address directly criticisms of federations as ineffectual workplaces – a perspective I do not share, at least when indiscriminately applied wholesale to all federations. But it does suggest the following, namely, that truly transparent social sector organizations actively accountable to their stakeholders are compelled to create professionally supportive, organizationally healthy work environments as a sine qua non for achieving organizational mission and strategic priorities.]

Jewish community federations enjoy an unparalleled 100-year history as trusted depositories for annual contributions of philanthropic resources. Yet, a century of success in annual campaign transactional fundraising cannot obviate the need for intensive efforts to develop much more highly participative forms of philanthropy. Similarly, just as campaign achievements are a necessary but insufficient means of raising funds to meet the system’s needs, the Jewish federation’s hard-earned reputation as a safe, trustworthy Jewish community chest is now inadequate to satisfy growing expectations of increasing numbers of contemporary donors (Edelsberg, 2004). Indeed, grantees themselves are asking to be held to higher standards because of the sector-wide realization that “no cause is worthy enough to justify a gift that is not making a truly positive difference in the lives for whom it is intended (Streeter, 2001, p. 11).” Furthermore, it costs money both to develop federation resources, as well as to give them away (Litman & Karen, 2005; Siegal & Yancey, 2003).

Federations raise funds and build community. They also engage in grant making – as much as $3 billion of it, system wide, in any given year. The challenge to federations is this: Today’s donors demand accountability, seek value, and expect performance. In other words, federations need to become philanthropically effective organizations.

Effective philanthropy is an approach to raising, stewarding, and granting funds that relies on transparency and accountability plus the measured advancement of mission to achieve its purpose. Effective philanthropy for federations is grounded in partnerships with beneficiary agencies, a key component of which is the measurement of outcomes achieved with funds granted to projects deemed to hold the greatest promise for producing communal benefit. Federations are best served when they balance their relentless pursuit of resources with resolute efforts to demonstrate results.

FUNDER, AND GRANTEE PRESSURES FOR PHILANTHROPIC EFFECTIVENESS

Peter Frumkin (2004) of the Hudson Institute argues that foundation philanthropy is “quietly in the midst of a crisis” (p. 3). Frumkin writes, “At the core of the angst gripping funds are two complex and enduring issues that have confronted foundations of all kinds: effectiveness and accountability (p. 6).” As he points out, no one would suggest, given the choice between effectiveness and ineffectiveness, that foundations would voluntarily choose the latter. Federations, Mark Kramer observed in a recent conversation, “will not lose points by demonstrating effectiveness.” However, there is more than a straw man argument to make here. Federations need to acknowledge the strong and mounting donor sentiment that accounting for effective use of donated dollars is critical to its mission. Younger funders are particularly vocal about matters of effectiveness and impact. They often define themselves as “investors” and are every bit as interested in hard data on grant outcomes and results as they are in stories of grantee success (Grace & Wendroff, 2001).

Federations would do well to recognize that the system’s prevailing fundraising mission, ethos, and culture create a standard of money metrics that fails to satisfy and motivate contemporary funders. Such measures as numbers of new and lapsed campaign donors, size of individual gifts, card-for-card percentage increases in giving, and total dollars raised in and of themselves do not inspire donor trust or engagement.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Federations can begin assessing their philanthropic effectiveness by asking three deceptively simple questions: What are our critical goals? How are we doing? What have we accomplished? Federations will need to hold themselves to the same standards to which they expect grantees – especially agencies that receive annual campaign allocations – to conform. They will need first to create and to cultivate a culture of measurement in which funds raised are complementary to the work of describing and determining what goals have been achieved in the investment, management, and use of funds. In this scenario, federations would immerse themselves in more purposeful monitoring of funds allocated from the annual campaign and granted from endowment funds and supporting organizations. This calls for studying significant allocations and grants to see whether grantees achieved the stated project outcomes. On a broader level, federations would systematically examine their philanthropic effectiveness, beginning with a more penetrating substantiation of the basis on which community funding priorities are determined. They would conduct a thorough, open, and well-communicated annual review of their overall performance in the raising of funds, stewardship of resources, and results realized in the funding of grantees.

The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, Birthright Israel, and the Jewish Health Care Foundation of Pittsburgh (Prager, 19994) are among the major Jewish communal enterprises in which principles of effectiveness pervade grant making. Although approaches to describing and documenting philanthropic effectiveness are distinct (Ostrower, 2004), each of these funding organizations seems to accept the Porter and Kramer proposition that essential elements of effectiveness include the following:

• clarity of organizational purpose and mission focus
• articulated theories of change for individual projects
• fiscal accountability
• efficient operations
• organizational transparency
• grant monitoring
• outcome assessment of grants
• knowledge assessment (what is learned in the grant making by funder and grantee alike)

THREE INITIAL STEPS IN DEMONSTRATING PHILANTHROPIC EFFECTIVENESS

This business of effective philanthropy cuts across three levels of federation activity: evaluating individual grants, describing more explicitly how it decides to grant funds, and working closely with grantees to build value through results-oriented philanthropy.

The first and most easily accessible realm is the monitoring and evaluation of its individual grants. Grant making is a major function at every federation in the country (even if it occurs entirely in the form of campaign allocations). In the independent sector, project and program evaluation is generally considered to be a given in most grant making of any meaningful amount (Walker & Grossman, 19995). There is no evidence, however, that evaluation has a firm foothold as a common practice in the federation system. In addition, although it is obvious, for example, that a social services project, a social action initiative, a curriculum innovation in a day school, or a capital project each requires different approaches to evaluation, each also necessitates the expenditure of funds and the application of professional expertise if its success is to be measured.

Federations as a rule neither budget significant dollars nor routinely hire trained personnel to conduct grant evaluations (Litman & Barth, 2005), although there are notable exceptions. Additionally, models already exist in the system in which philanthropic effectiveness is displayed through rigorous grant evaluation. The challenge is to make this practice a standard one.

What we are seeing in the field is a pronounced shift from intention-based charity to investment-based philanthropy. Funders, particularly next generation and entrepreneurial philanthropists, clamor for a focus on performance. They expect the federation to work with grantees to determine whether funded projects produce outcomes and results.

To measure their philanthropic effectiveness, federations need to describe more explicitly how they reach decisions to allocate and grant funds and on what basis they make awards. Federations then should account for the ways in which grantees achieve desired outcomes, as well as analyze situations in which unrealized or unanticipated goals characterize the funded project.

Federations are well positioned to measure their philanthropic effectiveness. Around the country, they enjoy excellent relationships with donors and grantees alike. Volunteer leaders, working together with trained professionals, can ensure that dollars raised in annual campaigns and funds contributed to donor-advised vehicles and supporting organizations are managed with full and open disclosure. Investment tactics, strategies, and performance should be reported broadly and available for public scrutiny. Granting funds from the campaign, philanthropic and federation endowment funds, and supporting organizations creates opportunities for funder and grantee interaction that will advance the dynamics of effective philanthropy. At each point in these interactions there is the opportunity to deepen donors’ involvement with the federation and to enliven the spirit of mutual responsibility the federation and its grantees have to one another for the stewardship and effective use of funds.

A NEW COVENANT

Jewish community federations are among the most successful fundraising organizations in the entire not-for-profit world. However, the amount of dollars raised and the metrics of money alone will not sustain the system. Federations in the 21st century will be as much about meaning as money, as concerned with results as much as with resources, and be held to higher standards of both efficiency and effectiveness similar to what they have imposed on their beneficiary agencies. The stakes are high, as Cleveland Federation president Tim Wuliger (2004) notes: “Successful organizations which do not seek to change or worse yet, have erected impediments to change, are the successful organizations which have begun to fail.” We have a new covenant to create. Funders are asking the federation to develop an architecture of tzedakah that produces blueprints for the transparent management of bountiful philanthropy. Contributors who entrust federations with their donations and philanthropic assets expect that the federation will make a demonstrable difference in the world with their grants. The federation faces an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen abiding bonds with loyal donors and to enter into authentic relationships with all funders through a sacred commitment to philanthropic effectiveness.

Chip Edelsberg, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, which fosters compelling and effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews in the United States. When the full version of this piece was originally published in the Journal of Jewish Community Service, Edelsberg was Vice President of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

References

Edelsberg, Charles. (2004, Winter). Federation philanthropy for the future. Journal of Jewish Communal Service, 31-38.

Frumkin, Peter. (2004). Trouble in foundation land: Looking back, looking ahead. Indianapolis: Hudson Institute.

Grace, Kay Sprinkel, and Wendroff, Alan L. (2001). High-impact philanthropy: How donors, hoards, and nonprofit organizations can transform communities. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Litman, Sacha, and Barth, Karen. (2005, February). Federation planned giving and endowments economics study. New York: United Jewish Communities.

Ostrower, Francie. (2004). Foundation effectiveness: Definitions and challenges. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy.

Prager, Dennis J. (1999, November). Raising the value of philanthropy. Pittsburgh: Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

Siegal, Dan, & Yancey, Jenny. (2003). Philanthropy’s forgotten resource? Engaging the individual donor. Mill Valley, CA: New Visions Philanthropic Research & Development.

Streeter, Ryan. (2001). Transforming charity: Toward a results-oriented social sector. Indianapolis: Hudson Institute.

Walker, Gary, and Grossman, Jean Baldwin. (1999, April). Philanthropy and outcomes: Dilemmas in the quest for accountability. Public/Private Ventures Brief.

Wuliger, Timothy F. (2004, December 5). Board Chair’s remarks. Annual Meeting of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

Source: “More Than Money: A Covenant of Federation Philanthropic Effectiveness,” Chip Edelsberg, eJewishPhilanthropy, July 15, 2015

“Israel”

Say the word in a gathering of almost any diverse group of Jews, and the room divides.

“Israel”

Write the word for almost any Jewish audience of readers—as I have done here—and expect that each individual immediately conjures up a passel of highly personalized associations and passionate opinions about political matters. Proceed with caution and make no assumptions as an author that there is agreement on what Israel means to your readers.

That in mind, the Jim Joseph Foundation Board of Directors and professional staff recently returned from a week in Israel that included special immersion activities and our regular quarterly board meeting. Israel embraced us with her people and landscapes, language and culture. For whatever differences of opinions exist among the Directors and professionals, there was a palpable, compelling cohesiveness to our Israel experience. Each in his or her way affirmed how essential Israel education is to the Jewish education funding mandate the Foundation pursues. We repeatedly recognized and communicated with conviction to one another the unique place Israel holds within the Foundation’s mission.

The Israel to which I referred above—the one which divides rooms and evokes oppositional opinions—was superseded by a Jewish homeland and nation-state that exercised a profoundly unifying force on the Foundation family.

A new grant award to the iCenter reflected the Board and professional staff’s own “Israel education” during the trip. This three-year grant (the Foundation’s third) represents a substantive field building investment. The grant supports the iCenter’s operations and helps expand its capacity to provide an array of critically important Israel education curricular, instructional, and professional development initiatives.

Additionally, the Foundation continues to support the Birthright Israel Foundation by subsidizing Birthright experiences for thousands of young Jewish adults. It is a direct, effective way for the Foundation to help young adults develop personal connections to Israel and Israelis during formative years.

The grants by design are complementary, strategically enabling Jewish youth, teens, and young adults—and their educators—to explore Israel through different encounters that contribute to personally relevant meaning making.

Beyond the Board table, Directors and staff professionals saw first-hand what Israel education and engagement looks, feels, and sounds like on the ground, in Israel.  This included a memorable Shabbat dinner at the Jerusalem Moishe House; meetings with participants from the innovative EXCEL, Onward Israel, and Tamid programs; and hearing the unique perspectives on the Taglit-Birthright Israel enterprise from Taglit CEO Gidi Mark, Senior Educator Zohar Raviv, American Birthright alumni, and IDF personnel who served as Birthright Israel madrichim. In fact, while in Jerusalem, we divided the Foundation Directors and professionals to ride buses and engage in site visits with three different Birthright groups.

Additional experiences further affirmed previous grant awards. Given the Foundation’s desire to learn about and support alumni networks, it was gratifying to hear from Pardes Institute graduates benefitting from its Foundation-funded educator alumni program. We all were excited when the chief engineer of the iCenter-supported Israel Space IL project, along with its primary Israeli investor, Morris Kahn, highlighted progress being made in this international moon landing competition.

Fortunately, we also had time for private conversations with leading Israeli thinkers and officials. We participated in separate meetings and conversations with the Hartman Institute’s astute Tal Becker and inspirational Donniel Hartman. Discussions with Itamar Rabinovich and Ari Shavit challenged us to think about Israel education in historically grounded, nuanced ways. United States Ambassador Daniel Shapiro briefed us for over an hour. Directors and professionals enjoyed an enlightening tour of the Israel museum with its inimitable Director, James Snyder.

In all instances, Israel’s shimmering immediacy suffused conversations with a powerful sense of her presence.

One of the Foundation’s greatest challenges is to continually seek out the most effective strategies for funding Israel education. The Foundation’s founder—whose gravesite in Israel we visited to honor Jim Joseph’s memory —possessed an exceptionally keen, almost prescient sense of the need for Jews in the United States to diligently weave teaching and learning about Israel inextricably into the fabric of Jewish education. Jim Joseph, z”l, believed the Jewish people could not flourish absent ongoing Jewish education—with the study and experiencing of Israel elemental to both vibrant Jewish community in the Diaspora and a safe, secure Jewish state in the volatile Middle East. Jim Joseph clearly saw that Jewish and Israel education animated each other, bound perpetually together.

Finally, then, as I ruminated how to capture for readers the magic that the Jim Joseph Foundation family experienced in Israel, I grasped for words that ultimately elude me. Others fortunate enough to experience a peer or family trip to Israel surely know the feeling of trying to “explain” the special feeling that an immersive Israel experience creates. In this instance, let me conclude by invoking the message Tal Becker persuasively conveyed to us, one which resonated powerfully with Directors and professionals alike: If we are intent on establishing a civil dialogue on Israel, we must become character witnesses to the reality that is contemporary Israel. For Jim Joseph Foundation leaders and professionals, intensive time together in Eretz Y’Israel enlightened us and will assist Foundation efforts to advance Israel education.

The mission of the Jim Joseph Foundation—to foster compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews—has been a central theme of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up influenced by dozens of Jewish educators in a variety of settings including Sunday and Hebrew school, youth groups, day camps, and group travel to Israel. I spent most of my childhood summers at Jewish overnight camp, deepening my connection to Judaism and building lifelong friendships. And, I engaged deeply in Jewish life in college and after graduation. Professionally, I spent three years as Program Director at Camp Alonim in Simi Valley, CA, and most recently worked at the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund of San Francisco in a number of capacities.

As a result of these experiences, I grew to understand the Jewish education landscape and the functions of a foundation program officer prior to joining the Jim Joseph Foundation team. Still, no life experiences fully prepare one for a job, which is why I was eager to get started in mid-April. Instead of an “easing in” period, I jumped right into the deep end—a deliberate decision by the Foundation. This rapid onboarding was invigorating and exciting, providing significant early exposure to a range of Foundation grants. Three of them in which I am involved, each at various stages of implementation, highlight pillars of the Foundation’s efforts: funder collaboration; grants implemented in partnership with grantees; and evaluation. My reflections below hopefully offer insight into the Foundation’s strategic approach to grantmaking, as well as a new employee’s experience engaging early and often with grantees.

Funder Collaboration

I first began work on the Community-Based Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Initiative—one of the Foundation’s most complex and ambitious initiatives. Working with other professional team members, we developed a grant proposal for a community seeking funding as part of this collaborative effort to strengthen Jewish teen education in ten participating communities. I observed the amount of due diligence and analysis that informs the development of a grant proposal, and also gained an early understanding about the importance the Foundation places on funder collaboration. By engaging other national and local funders in this initiative, lessons are shared, dollars increase, successful models adapted, and Jewish teen learning opportunities are amplified. Sure, collaborating with other funders at this scope and scale takes effort and time, but the outcomes for Jewish teen education nationally are far greater than if any one funder tackled it alone.

Grants as Partnerships

The second grant in which I have been involved is in its very early stages (awarded in February this year) and aligns with a passion of mine: Jewish camping. Foundation for Jewish Camp’s (FJC) Hiddur Initiative aims to enhance Jewish learning and growth in Jewish camps by employing expert Jewish educators to work with participating camps. At a recent gathering to celebrate Sandy Edwards, who was the Foundation’s Associate Director of ten years, Chip Edelsberg presented a slide of the grant process when the Foundation launched in 2005. The slide was blank. But under Sandy’s leadership, the grant process today—from origination to closure—is robust and thoughtful. Working through these steps for Hiddur, I saw many examples of the true partnership between the Foundation and grantee. The Foundation works closely with the grantee to finalize the award letter, ensuring that both parties are comfortable with the deliverables and timing. Further, any changes to the budget or program design are made in partnership, with the grant’s goals and objectives as guiding principles in any decisions.

Evaluation

Finally, the third grant example is the Specialty Camps Incubator, another collaboration with FJC and one of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s most celebrated grants. In the second cohort of this initiative, four new specialty overnight camps were launched that blend Jewish learning and values with interests like sports, science, entrepreneurship, and more. This grant affirms (and demonstrated very strongly to me) the priority the Foundation places on evaluation. Prior to joining the Foundation team, while I knew of the Foundation’s commitment to evaluation, I did not fully appreciate how truly important it is to achieving outcomes. Evaluation results are disseminated to strengthen the field; successful models (like the North Shore Teen Initiative, BASIS—Israel Education Day School Project; Los Angeles High School Affordability Initiative, and B’yadenu) are documented to share for broader implementation; and existing Foundation initiatives are improved based on evaluation findings. For example, early evaluation results for the Specialty Camp Incubator uncovered the need for camps to add new session lengths to attract more campers. Now entering year two of the second cohort, enrollment is up across the board in part because of this change.

My first two months at the Jim Joseph Foundation have been overwhelmingly positive and provided a framework for me to quickly learn about the Foundation operations and strategies. I’ve immersed myself in grant proposals, logic models, budgets, evaluations, and annual reports. I’ve engaged in conversations with a number of co-funders and grantees. I’ve learned from skilled grantmakers and expert teachers. Onboarding can be challenging of course. But from my perspective, it is great to “jump” right in. My early experiences and quick learnings ultimately will benefit future grantees and co-funders with whom I work. The Foundation is undergoing an exciting time of transition—I am fortunate to be a part of it and to have the great opportunity to help advance Jewish education.

Editor’s Note: Later this month, Foundation Associate Director Sandy Edwards will leave the position she has held since 2006. She will remain involved in Jewish education and philanthropy through consulting and volunteering efforts. Below are reflections from Sandy on her time at the Jim Joseph Foundation working with grantees, other funders, and stakeholders in the field.

Ten years can at once seem like a long time and go by in an instant. As I reflect back on my ten years at the Jim Joseph Foundation, I am flooded with memories about where the Foundation and the field were in 2005—and where we now are today.

When I joined the Foundation, nothing was in place. No infrastructure for disbursing grants. No methods for evaluation. No standards for follow-up and accountability. There is a certain satisfaction I derive from having helped build the Foundation from the ground up. While the strategies and tasks varied, the goal always was focused: Create compelling Jewish learning experiences for young Jews.

Pursuing this mission is really what brought me into our field of work in the first place. And working on behalf of the Jim Joseph Foundation was the opportunity to be part of something new, exciting, and special. I look back and take pride in the contributions to four primary areas of which I was fortunate to be a part:

Developing the “invisibles”

From the time I joined the Foundation, we established internal systems—the key “invisible” structures—that helped translate its grantmaking strategy to success on the ground. Throughout the last ten years, these systems were the vehicles by which the Board of Directors awarded more than $350 million in grants and the Foundation paid to date $301 million in grant amounts. We processed 1,741 of grant payments, participated in eight successful audits, and developed a grantmaking procedure manual.

We worked diligently to apply principles of operation in order to support grantees. Every day, I worked with a team at the Foundation that refined these systems and sought to make them as effective as possible. Over time, they became useful to grantees and a vital part of their work. Why? Because even the best intentions, best grantees, and most visionary philanthropists need these basic nuts-and-bolts mechanisms to move an idea from paper to realized outcomes.

Relationships with Grantees

As the Foundation’s philanthropy grew, I came to realize the importance of relationships—both within an office environment and, in our work, with grantees. In fact, developing relationships with grantees really has become a best practice over the last two decades. Philanthropy at its best is so much more than a transaction. Rather, when a funder and grantee have a strong relationship, premised on openness and honesty, success is more likely and better learning and sharing occur. Developing these relationships takes time, a lot of conversations, and trust—but the payoff and the outcomes are well worth this time.

In my role as Associate Director, I was privileged to engage with all of the Foundation’s major grantees. I developed strong relationships with many. Unfortunately, I don’t have the space here to mention them all. But I do want to highlight a few of the individuals who I grew to know well who spurred tremendous outcomes.

Arlene Agress and Miriam Prum Hess of BJE Los Angeles led the complex, multi-faceted LA High School Affordability Initiative, which supported five Jewish high schools as they raised $21.25 million in endowment funding, benefitting hundreds of students and their families. Foundation for Jewish Camp’s CEO Jeremy Fingerman and Michele Friedman and her team recruited nine talented camp directors and worked with them to launch nine successful Jewish specialty camps through the Specialty Camps Incubator— one of the most innovative initiatives of which I was a part. FJC and the camp directors are remarkably creative and committed to this exciting initiative.

In ten years, I saw talented leaders lead and build entire fields. In teen engagement and education, BBYO’s Matt Grossman and his team forged a deep relationship with the Foundation during my time here. Our work together resulted in enriched Jewish learning for the tens of thousands of teens in BBYO’s network. In young adult engagement, David Cygielman took Moishe House from one local house to a scalable, international vehicle for young Jewish adults to build communities and make space for Jewish learning. And Anne Lanski helped to develop the iCenter and, through that organization, greatly advance what was a nascent field of Israel education.

In the examples above, a strong relationship between funder and grantee is essential to the success that has been demonstrably achieved.

Model Documentation

A founding principle of the Foundation was the great responsibility we have to share models of Jewish education that strengthen the field. I am deeply proud of our contribution to model documentation, and I worked closely with talented individuals in this important area of work. David Waksberg of Jewish LearningWorks led the Bay Area Day School Israel Education Project (BASIS)—a major development for the field of Israel education—which we then documented online for communities across the country. Already, BASIS has informed the development of iNfuse, through which the Center disseminated an adaptation of the BASIS model to other day schools nationally.

Near Boston, Adam Smith has led the North Shore Teen Initiative (NSTI) and truly changed the landscape of teen Jewish engagement in 23 cities and towns north of the city. As NSTI’s success crystalized, we worked to document this model to be adapted in other communities. This was especially useful as the Foundation launched its ambitious Community-Based Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Initiative, designed to help ten communities implement best practices in this space. Alan Oliff, the Project Director of B’Yadenu, worked with six day schools also in the Boston area to implement school-wide change so that educators build their skills and capacity to meet the needs of diverse learners. I was privileged late last year to attend an institute at which Alan and his team welcomed other communities to Boston to share this important model first-hand.

Evaluations

Finally, the Foundation’s program of evaluation today is a defining element of our efforts. Of course, it did not just appear out of thin air, and it has expanded and evolved over ten years. A program of evaluation on this scale benefits many—grantees, potential grantees, other funders, and many others in the field—and takes a true team to ensure its viability. The Foundation and I enjoy deep relationships with very strong evaluation consultants, among them Ellen Irie at Informing Change and Wendy Rosov at Rosov Consulting who are part of the Foundation’s new—and potentially groundbreaking—evaluators’ consortium. I am most proud of my work in the area of evaluation because I know its power and potential. I hope that the field increasingly utilizes evaluation, data, and other outcome measures to inform future efforts. A tool like JData, a database and website that collects and provides census-like information about Jewish educational organizations in North America, for example, is a game changer. I would like to see its potential fully realized as part of increased use of data-driven growth and effectiveness of Jewish education.

Moving On

A lot happens in grantmaking over ten years. Strategies are tested and analyzed; successes are achieved; a field continues to grow. I was a part of this with the Jim Joseph Foundation’s dedicated Board of Directors and talented team, led by Executive Director Chip Edelsberg, and it was exciting to see the change that we made together. I am heartened at the great progress made in these four areas. In all examples above, strong relationships and a solid team dynamic were and still are integral to success. We see this dynamic more and more throughout our field—truly a positive development. And I am especially grateful for the personal relationships I had with Foundation grantees, evaluators, and other stakeholders

It is hard to believe that it was ten years ago when the Jim Joseph Foundation began. Now, I look forward to my next phase of life—starting my consulting practice and using what I learned through these wonderful experiences to help others and continue to strengthen our field.

Thank you all who have been a part of my work at the Foundation to advance the important cause of Jewish education and in creating an effective philanthropy practice.